An analysis of whistler mode radiation from the Spacelab 2 electron beam

Abstract

During the shuttle's Spacelab 2 mission the University of Iowa's plasma diagnostics package (PDP) was released from the shuttle to free fly. At times during this free flight when the PDP was magnetically connected to the shuttle, Stanford's fast‐pulsed electron generator, located in the shuttle cargo bay, ejected a 1‐keV, 50‐mA electron beam. The plasma wave instrument on board the PDP detected intense whistler mode radiation during these beam ejections. This paper presents a study of a whistler mode emission detected during one particular continuous electron beam firing. Calculations indicate that the beam radiated approximately 1.6 mW in the whistler mode as the beam traversed the 200 m from the shuttle to the PDP. The emissivity also decreased by about a factor of 10 over this same distance. The measured wave powers are 10 7 greater than wave powers expected from incoherent Cerenkov radiation, verifying that the radiation is generated by a coherent process. Estimates of the emissivity based on measured electric field intensities in the beam indicate that the whistler mode noise is produced by radiation from electron bunches created by an electrostatic beam‐plasma instability.